Abstract

Last month, the Trump administration reopened its effort to allow Kentucky to require low-income citizens to work in exchange for health-care coverage — part of its larger goal of imposing work requirements nationwide for all kinds of benefits, including assistance buying food. The Kentucky effort has run afoul of at least one federal judge, who wrote that the administration “never adequately considered whether Kentucky HEALTH would in fact help the state furnish medical assistance to its citizens, a central objective of Medicaid.”

Nonetheless, supporters argue that work requirements improve the beneficiaries’ lives. Our research on the already established work requirements for welfare suggests otherwise.